Photographs of Dublin by Thomas Johnson Westropp
On 25 January 1916, Thomas Johnson Westropp (1860-1922) delivered his Presidential Address to the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland (RSAI). It was the apogee of a career spent in what he himself referred to as ‘the severe and less popular type of archaeology’. Born in 1860 to a wealthy Limerick landowning family, Westropp graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, as a civil engineer in 1885. His independent means ensured that he was able to devote himself on a full-time basis to antiquities. He published over 300 articles, and his comprehensive surveys of the prehistoric monuments and medieval buildings of Limerick and Clare stand amongst his finest achievements. His camera was a vital archaeological tool, and collections of his photographs have found their way into the National Museum, National Library, Trinity College, Royal Irish Academy and Irish Architectural Archive.
The Archive holds twelve albums of photographs by Westropp. Each album bears an inscription inside its front cover indicating that they were sent by Westropp to his sister Mary Johnson O’Callaghan of Lismehan, Co. Clare, over the period 1898 to 1921. There are usually two photographs on each album page, and each photograph is individually identified in Westropp’s own hand. The subject matter is overwhelmingly antiquarian, with a strong geographical bias in favour of Clare and Limerick.
Three months after Westropp delivered his RSAI Presidential Address the Easter Rising erupted. The events of Easter Week 1916 clearly affected Westropp; he turned his camera away from the past to focus very much on the present. His position and reputation provided him with privileged access, and between May and June he took at least forty-four photographs of the damaged city. A set is in the National Library, a set in Trinity College, a set in the Royal Irish Academy, and in Volume 10 of the albums of antiquarian photographs held in the Irish Architectural Archive there are twenty-four photographs headed ‘Dublin after the Sinn Fein Rebellion’. Twenty-two are presented in this exhibition in large format prints derived from the original images in the albums. They are a vivid, still shocking, record of the destruction wrought to the centre of Dublin between 24 and 29 April 1916.
